Gheorghita Zbaganu
Who was Virgil Zbaganu

      How can I write about my brother in an objective manner? I simply cannot. What happened ten years ago marked my life. The date of August 21 1992 clearly separates it in two parts: "before", when Gili was alive and "after" when he , for the majority of people, is not.

      For me he is still alive and he will be as long I shall live. His life is now subtler: He lives in my spirit and in the spirit of his Mother, Father and Sister.

      He was born at June 10, 1954 at Lugoj maternity, judet Timis, Romania. He was 3 years younger than me. Until he was 7 we lived in a village from Timis county called Visag.. In 1961 we moved from Visag to Bucharest. From a small village into a big town where, he said "you could not see the stars at night".

      There where three of us: two brothers and a sister. All three of us followed the same elementary school and the same high school. Our paths separated after that: I followed the University (mathematics), our sister became a physician and Virgil an engineer. He was admitted to Bucharest Politechical University at 1974. However, he started the courses in 1975 because he was the first generation which benefited by an innovation of Ceausescu: instead serving the army after the college, 6 months the fresh undergraduates served 9 months at the army before the school. The result - one whole lost year. The young man forgot a lot during that year. The situation lasted until 1989. Virgil had difficulties to adapt the situation: in the first year of studies he lost two exams. Maybe that marked him for the rest of the time. He was a good student, however. After graduating (1979) he got a job in Bucharest, at the Computer Factory Bucharest. The jobs were given by the State according to the performance of the students: in Bucharest there were not more than 20 jobs. That's why I claim that he was a good student. He worked at pattern recognition: how to make a screener to recognize the letters of the alphabet. Maybe that sounds ridiculous now, in 2002 but in 1980 the problem was not solved.

      In 1980 he married with a psychologist, Valeria Negovan. She was a writer, too. Virgil was writing stories himself. He was also interested in ideology, too. In those times we learned Political Economy, Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism both at high school and at the college. His style was to understand Marx's position and not the comments we were taught. I remember my polemics with him about communism when he was at high school. He read "The Communist Manifesto" and other works of Marx and Lenin, which I did not. I was more interested to have a good mark than to know what really those guys tried to say. My idea was that there is an evolutionary law in the history: capitalism, socialism, and communism. Virgule asked: why should be like that? Why the capitalism cannot last forever? Why, I said, you see, there is exploiting of the proletarians by capitalists. So what? He would ask me. The exploitation can last forever. There is no objective law that after capitalism comes socialism. If you want to finish the exploitation you need people to believe that exploitation is bad and people to assume the risk. So you need believers and fighters. There is no scientific necessity of the socialism: socialism has only a moral justification.

      He was a member of the party, from 1977 until 1989. A member with personal ideas about communism and communists. After both of us got married, we had no time to argue about ideology. Still I am positive that he remained a man of the Left, even a communist. Which I cannot say for myself. In the 80'ies I became anti-Ceausescu then Anti-Lenin and in 1989 I was a fierce anti-Marxist. 1989

      As many people remember, in 16 December 1989 started the mysterious uprising against Ceausescu regime called by mass media "The Romanian Revolution". Needless to say, Virgil was a Ceausescu regime hater. As me and the majority of the people, he listened to the radio Free Europe and believed for some days in the "Timisoara massacre": 4800 dead and over 12000 injured. I met him on Tuesday, December 19, 1989 at his home. He had decided to go back to Timis County, to cross the border into Yugoslavia and to try to find comrades with which to come back in Romania as guerilla fighters against Ceausescu. It was sheer luck that after two days, December 21 the uprising started in Bucharest, too. Virgil was in the middle of the crowd which, in the middle of the town, at Piata Universitatii shouted anti-Ceausescu slogans more that 12 hours: 11 am until 2 am next day. At 5 PM the things degenerated: an army truck hit some people in the crowd, killing some and the special troops began to shoot. As maybe you know, there were more than 50 casualties among the protesters. Virgil was in the first line, he told me once that he felt ashamed that he survived and a friend of him whom he met there, was shot dead.

      Next morning, December 22, Virgil mobilized some of his friends from the company and walked to the City (a 3 hours walk) to help the Revolution. People were inflamed, but the conservation instinct told them not to mess in that business. The board of the Institute warned that the followers of Virgule will be fired and locked the entrance. The same thing happened at the other companies . Virgil and his friends escalated the fence and went to the Revolution. That zone of Bucharest, Berceni, was a working class area. They shouted slogans at the entrances of the other factories and called them to the City, to finish with Ceausescu. "Who is Romanian, let come with us, the cowards may stay" - that was the call. As a result, as the column progressed to the center of the city, many others joined and at the Central Committee, Virgil arrived in front of 10000 angry people.

      The days after the fall of Ceausescu were the days of the "terrorists". The civilians got weapons and shot at each other. More than one thousand were killed. As the things appear now, there were no terrorists. It was , seemingly, scenario used to compromise the socialist regime, to make the sinister connection communism = fascism. If you are not that young, you remember, maybe, the mass graves in Timisoara with "tortured victims of the security"; (mother with child, the man with breast tied with wire) there were simply poor people unburied from the "Poor cemetery".

      Virgil predicted that , after the fall of Ceausescu, three demons would haunt the Romanian society: the anti-communist demon, the nationalist one and the mysticoidal one. To control them, there must exist a new party of the Left, because the Communist one was compromised. Together with other people (me included) he tried to make a party "The Party of the Social Democracy ". Ironically, that was the name chosen by Iliescu in 1992 for his party, winner of the elections in 1992.

      Unfortunately , nothing came from that initiative. We gave a proclamation but none of us had guts for the tough organizatorical work implied by it. Virgil , seeing what kind of people were his fellow travelers decide to learn organizatorical work in trade-union activity. He worked as a researcher at the "Romanian Institute for Printing" as a computer engineer. In that time he was projecting a 24-pin printer for the Computer Plant , Bucharest. Due to his revolutionary activities he was chosen the president of the trade union of that institute.

Trade-union activity

      As a Trade Union leader, Virgil had his own ideas. The task of the trade union is to make politics, and politics of the Left - that was his main one. To understand the heresy, you must grasp a bit those times. The politics has nothing to do with the trade unions - was the common belief - (except, of course if the trade union leaders were anti-Communist, they were favored).

      In 1990, September he was chosen the secretary of the national union of the trade unions of printers. The position was not a bad one: a good salary and a word to say in the negotiations with the state, at that time the great Boss. He told me some things about the trade-union activity but I cannot remember what. I have no understanding for the trade union activity, the subject is too boring. The fact is that the leadership was corrupted and the trade-union bosses were interested only in their well being, not in the well being of their members. Maybe he was disappointed by the "working class" itself, which lacked combativity and had nothing against privatization and capitalism. One explanation : in those years there was a boom in printing, hundreds of new newspapers and journals were devorated by millions of Romanians. Therefore an average salary of a printer worker was three average Romanian salaries .

June 1991

      Many times I asked myself why Virgil dared to launch the initiative of reorganizing the Communist Party. Its leaders betrayed the party. I remember that in January 12 1990 my sister and me visited a place in Calea Grivitei, near the railway station where a team of ex- nomenclature wanted to make a committee to register the Communist Party at the court. One of the first laws issued from the new power was the law of the parties. If a group of 251 members could provide a name, a status and a program they were automatically registered. At that time I felt a satisfaction to see people which only one month ago I despised and considered being enemies. I could recognize two of them: Ilie Verdet was the highest in rank (he was a member of the politburo) and Eugen Florescu, an ex-boss with the propaganda. I wished them with generosity success and I told them that I am not interested in the new communist party. In the same day there was a meeting in the front of the govern building which lasted late in the night. I was with Virgil out there, by sheer curiosity. I saw them in the morning and I didn't like their slogans and composition. The idea was to mourn the dead people who were killed three weeks ago by militia and security.

      January 12 1990. It is an interesting date in the chronology of that hideous year 1990. A crowd of maybe 10000 gathered at night in the front of Government Building from Piata Victoriei. They were angry and demanded avenge. "Death for death" - was the slogan. On December 31, 1989 the new authorities cancelled the death penalty from Romania. The guys from January 12 wanted it back. The idea was that Iliescu &comp abolished the death penalty in order to save nomenklatura from the popular justice. They called Iliescu down, between them and, after a cacophony of shouting and booing Dumitru Mazilu (who is believed to have organized that riot) issued a new decree with two points: 1. The Communist Party was declared an illegal terrorist organization and 2. In three weeks there will be a referendum about the death penalty.

      Next day the two patibular decrees were cancelled and Dumitru Mazilu was dismissed.

      My guess is that on January 12 Virgil decided to be a communist.

      The history goes as follows: Ilie Verdet promised to the scared to death first 251 members of the new communist party that he will go and register the party when the moment will be favorable. He was intimidated in January, then in February and then the file with the 251 members simply disappeared. The first group of would be communists (actually second rank members of the nomenclature) disintegrated and they went to infect other parties.

      Virgil did not know that.

      In November 15 1990 Verdet with what remained from his group entered an existing party, The Democrat Party of the Labor and changed its name in "Socialist Party of the Labor"(SPL) with Ilie Verdet as president and Traian Dudas the next man. People believed that this was the new real Party. Not only the mass media were hostile, but all the other parties. The new SPL was a pariah in the political world. There were the glorious months of SPL.

      Virgil was a romantic. His sympathy was now with the SPL (we support always the persecuted, don't we?) and he had contacts with Verdet. He tried to offer SPL opportunities to make connections with the trade union movement. In that time, when everybody trade-union avoided SPL , being terrorized not to be considered communists Virgil dared to invite them and other socialist parties to the commemoration of December 13 1919 when the Averescu government killed 100 printers and other workers in Bucharest after a strike and a meeting . I remember that after putting flowers at the monument (demolished after that) there was a tension in the air when the representative of SPL started his talk; some young people from the delegation of the printers , controlled by Virgil, started to shout "Down with the communism" . But they shut up, ashamed after Virgil told them something. The ceremony was presented at the TV . Virgil had after that bad arguments with the other members from the board of the trade union: how did he dare invite guys from the red party? What would people say about the printers?

      Verdet decided that he must change the direction. In april 1991 he declared that he was never a communist and that the party is a socialist one, more or less the same as in France. Then many communists got out from the party. It was at the beginning of may, 1991 that Virgil told me that he found some comrades which preferred to remain anonymous which decided to form a National Committee to Reorganize the Romanian Communist Party. He considered this task to be of historical significance. Otherwise the Romanian people will be blamed by history, as a coward and not trustworthy one. How would you call a people with 3,8 mil. Communists in December 22, 1989 , morning and with 0 communists in December 22, 1989, 5 p.m?

      Besides, no other party dared to openly declare that it is the party of the working class. What happened with the working class? It disappeared? As long as no party is with them, there should be one at least to declare that it wants to defend its interests.

      "OK, Gili, but why you?" I asked him. "And what will happen to your job at trade unions?" " I give it up " he declared. I cannot do anything with those scoundrels.

      At that time I was member in "Socialist Democratic Party". I had a position at the Bucharest organization. I suggested Virgil to come into our party with his guys and change the name of our party in "Communist Democratic Party". His colleagues disagreed. Any way, now, after 10 years I doubt that it was a good idea. We were too naïve and the Bucharest organization was dissolved after a year by the president of that party because of "left deviation".

      The one, which wanted to be in control, was a deserter from SPL, Nicolae Balasoiu. His idea was to use Virgil as a puppet and not to expose his men. He collaborated to the wording of the first Proclamation of the new Committee. He had a huge lack of culture. Not only the socialist ideology but also even Romanian language put him hard problems.

      In June 22, 1991 (50 years after the start of WW2) the committee began the action. About 80 anonymous members (hardly I discovered a handful of them after Virgil's death) gave the task of vanguard to Virgil Zbaganu (the president of the committee, he made public his address and phone number) Nicolae Balasoiu (he used a pseudonym and gave no address and no phone) and Florin Cotolan (he gave the phone number but no address). The proclamation was multiplied in 25 copies, for TV, mass media, and foreign embassies. My contribution was modest: I sent it to the Chinese Embassy (they were very careful not to make any comment) , and to two journals I considered to be more or less sympathetically: "Romania Mare" of C.V. Tudor (now a nationalist which believes himself to be of center - left) and to "Europe" - an even more chauvinist journal, bankrupted in 1994, directed by a guy, Ilie Neacsu which is now a senator of Vadim. CV Tudor had no time for me but Ilie Neacsu was a great disappointment: he said me bluntly that we were traitors which want to harm SPL , the real communists!

      Thus the media effect of the action was rather modest. Only four journals mentioned it , but not the TV. It was my first alarm sign about Balasoiu: the guy was positive that Emanoil Valeriu, the second boss at the TV is a communist and a sympathizer and he will ask Virgil an interview.

      If E. Valeriu was a communist, he hided that very well. He did not mention anything.

      Ironically, the most objective sourse was "Cotidianul" - a fierce anti-Communist newspaper , property of Ion Ratiu, and the second man in National Peasant Party - the most reactionary political movement. Because the chief redactor was a high school colleague of Virgil, a poet , Florin Iaru, even more anti-communist than Ratiu, I appreciated that he could put into the brackets his ideology and not swear and calumniate his ex-colleague . A rara avis, then and now.

      The immediate effect was a campaign of menacing phone calls for Virgil and the other guy who made public the phone number, F. Cotolan. The phone rang and at the other end there were voices which sweared , insulted and menaced with death. Cotolan resisted two days after which he declared in public that there was a mistake, that the number was wrong and he has nothing to do with the committee of reorganizing. His wife warned him that she will divorce if he would not do that. The defection of Florin did not help too much - his wife divorced him anyway.

      The psychic pressure was too great even for Valeria, Virgil's wife. She menaced to divorce, too , but then she changed her mind. Virgil resisted all right because not all the calls were bad, there were also comrades which hoped they finally found the flag where to join.

      Here are some facts, some predicted by Virgil, others not, which affected his task.

      The first was that Virgil was fired from the trade-union job. His angry colleagues declared that he stained the name of "printers trade union" and there is no place for him not only in the board of union, but even he could not remain a rank and file member. He has already predicted that, so he did not suffer too much.

      The second was that when he came back at his institute, his chief (his name is, ironically, Irod!) declared that the position on which was engaged Virgil was cancelled so that he cannot come back to work. Still, the trade-union status stated precisely that any member of the board of the trade union could return to his work place any time. That was not predicted.

      As a consequence, Virgil became unemployed. He estimated that in a couple of months he would find a job. It was in July, 1991.

      The third fact was that in July 1991 the "parliament" (the constituent assembly) issued a "law" called the National Security Law . Any "extremist" movement of communist or fascist stemming was considered a risk for the national security and banned. It was predicted , but Virgil was confident that he could prove that the communist party was not extremist at all.

      Meanwhile he gathered a couple of hundreds of communists. He became a public personality interviewed by journalists. I published some of his interviews in Romanian in a book "The 21'st century will be communist or not at all" (1994) which was translated by a friend, (Gabriel Artigue Carro) in Spanish and put on Internet (the link is to be found at www.marxist.com/rezistenta ). They decided to call for a National Conference in September 15, 1991 in which to announce the new Programe of the Communist Party .

      His idea was that not all the members of the old RCP were only opportunists. Some of them were real communists. And they had a right to join and compete for power, the same right that was guaranteed to other parties. What was to be the new ideology and program of the Party? The communists will have to decide that at the Conference. What were the good deeds and what were the bad deeds of the old RCP? The Conference would have to decide that. The "process of the communism"? Only the communists could do that at their Conference in September.

August 1991

      Some of the members of SPL were attracted by the program of Virgil more than by the program of Ilie Verdet, the president of SPL , which became more and more toady with respect to the new authorities. The board of this party did not dare to say that they were Marxists and the word of "communism" was a horribile dictu for them. The emergence of Virgil was a new hope for them and an occasion to repair their lost honour. That's why Verdet and his gang never commented Virgil's innitiative: he couldn't overtly oppose the idea and couldn't say just like that "look, forget about the communism. We, the ex-communist chiefs decided that now is not the time to be a communist. The hot heads which say that they want to be communists and not socialists are only agents provocateurs". They decided to keep silence about Virgil.

      A not predicted fact occurred at august 20, 1991: the so-called "Moscow putsch". After Janaev's surrender a new wave of persecutions against the communists made half of Virgil's friends to go into the hiding and forget about a new communist party. As a consequence he was forced to postpone the Conference until December. The anti-communist hysteria was at a peak.

September 1991 - the miners

      At September 23 the miners came to Bucharest and forced the then Prime Minister, Petre Roman, to resign. Petre Roman was guilty for the crush of the Romanian economy in 1991: he started, at West orders, the "reform" which turned half of the Romanians into beggars. The miners wanted to talk with him at Valea Jiului but he was too great a guy to listen to the claims of working class.

      There were riots, clashes between the miners and the police. At least three casualties. Two civilians from Bucharest and a policeman. The coalers were helped now by the reactionary opposition which considered that the night of the long knives has arrived, when they will finish with the "communists". The communists were (in their head) Iliescu, Roman and National salvation Front. During the three days of riots Virgil went into hiding: he got some calls warning him that a team of miners came to hi house to kill the communist chief.

      After the riots ended, at the parliament some yesmen of Petre Roman pointed an accusing finger to the "communists" (this time SPL and Virgil) which conspired and plotted to force the "democrat" Petre Roman to resign.

      The result was that the courageous people who dared to make a conference for the communist party shrank that much that there was a problem even to find a building for the conference: the guys from a factory in Bucharest which had accepted to host the conference changed their mind and apologized: it was too dangerous. So the conference was postponed again for an uncertain date in 1992.

      Another problem: it was not enough the Conference to declare that the new RCP came into the Romanian political scene. The new party should be registered to the Court. But Nicolae Balasoiu (who gave some interviews himself, using a pseudonym) did not agree. According to him the Party was registered once in October 1945 , he himself was at the court so there was no need of a new registering. That was sheer nonsense because all the political parties should obey the new Law of the parties issued in 1990. The guy lost any connection with the reality . Far from helping Virgil , he became more or less a pain in the ass. At a meeting of the National committee in November 1991 they decided to find 251 signatures and go to the court to register the CRP. At that point Balasoiu defected.

      The next second man was Pantazi, another uneducated man whose only ideology was that he must protect the ex-polit bureau and disagreed with Virgil about the problem of nomenklatura. For Virgil what was before 1989 was not socialism, it was a dictatorship with some socialist elements. The one guilty for the crushing of the system was the red bourgeois, the nomenklatura. For Pantazi (which claimed to be supported by the ex central committee, very tough guys indeed which never showed themselves) it was socialism all right, everything was OK but the system crushed because the treason of Gorbatchev). Anyway, they collaborated in the action of searching founding members of the old - new RCP.

      Virgil was very mysterious to me, he never told me who were these founding members.

      Meanwhile, Virgil received informations from parliament members which were sympathizers and from lawyers that a party with the same name as the old RCP had no chances to be registered. They counseled him to change a bit the name. He decided to call the party "The Communist Party" - without "Romanian". The idea was that for friends it was the same party but for foes (at the Court, who will attack it using the law of national security) it was something different.

      At that point Pantazi defected. It was in february 1992. Not only that he defected, but he took with him the file with more that 150 signatures and adhesions.

      In October 1991 Virgil convinced Eugen Florescu (one of the members of the firs committee for reorganizing the RCP, in january 1990, then president of a small party and director of an ephemer journal, "Democracy") to give him a number of the journal in which Virgil was to print the first number from "The Spark" - the name of the official newspaper of RCP until 1989) . It was a good deal for Florescu, not so good for Virgil who payed for a thousand copies of the journal and was not able to sell them all. Now Florescu is a senator in the party of CV Tudor, "Great Romania".

March - August 1992

      Instead of Pantazi the second man became a police officer, Daniel Dediu. He had connections to a printing house and made membership cards under the name of Communist Party . I never met the guy as Virgil was alive. He offered himself to be the bodyguard of Virgil, he was very mysterious, his meetings with Virgil were conspirative. Virgil never told me this name as he was alive - in order to protect him.

      According to my research, Dediu appeared in March 1992.

      They produced a new Constitution of the Party, a new Program and started to search for the 251 founding members.

      Meanwhile Virgil was in audience to Virgil Magureanu (the ex chief of the Romanian Intelligence Agency) to announce him that he wanted to register the Communist Party. He told Magureanu that it was better to have communists in the open rather than in the hiding and asked him not to monitor his phone. My guess id that it was Dediu's idea with his conspirativity that the phone of Virgil was under monitorizing. Maybe yes, maybe no, but how could Virgil be so naïve to believe that he can trust Magureanu? Magureanu told him that he has nothing against any party which obeys the rules and that he doesn't think that somebody hears the phone but, to be sure, he will give Virgil an expert to control the phone. The expert controlled it and said that is all right, nobody listens to his calls. It was in may, 1992.

      Virgil continued to be an unemployed.

      Sometimes he wanted to get a job, then he thought that he would have not enough time for the immense task he assumed - to create from the ashes a new CP. He resisted, financially, by doing some small business with honey - the bees were one of his hobbies.

      There were hard times for him. The bees were in Visag, 500 km west from Bucharest. He was tired - to go there twice a month. He had finnancial difficulties, he had familiar problems (Valeria was thinking to divorce him because of his activities) and problems with the Party. I was of little help for him - all I could do was to fight inside the Socialist Democratic Party, whose member I was to shift its attitude to a friendly one with respect to the Communists. With some results at the Bucharest Organization. But the global effect was bad: the president of our party, a coward, disolved our organization in june 1992 because of bolshevik deviationism.

      The simple word "communist" panicked these "center - left" politicians. There exists an explanation: it was very easy in those years to label a communist as a fascist, to impute him the goulag and the stalinist crimes. Besides, many of them were activists of the old RCP and could be blackmailed with their past.

      Virgil was not one of them. He was not only very courageous, but he was a very good polemist. His line was that the crimes were stalinist ones and could not be imputed to the ideology , but to the social praxis of the first socialist state: the civil war , the imperialist encirclement of USSR, the primitivism of the Russian society. Anyway, he said, I am born in1954. What connection could I have with those crimes?

      Besides, I was not informed of Virgil's activities. Especially after Dediu's apparition, he became very conspirative. I knew only less than ten of his colleagues from the committee. But I could estimate that the perspective of the national conference withered away.

      Virgil decided to register the Communist Party at the court firstly and only after that think about the National Conference. I am not very sure, but I think that in August 1992 he and Dediu had about 200 adhesions / signatures for the new Communist Party.

      Meanwhile Pantazi worked on his own. He arrived at the conclusion that there is no need to register the party at the court, no need to compete to the elections. He claimed that the comrades from the top had given him task to keep the flag and that he is the real leader of the communists. He published at "Romania Mare" - the journal of CV Tudor a statement in which he excluded from the RCP the main actors of the Romanian politics: Iliescu, Roman, Brucan and I forgot whom. The problem was that he signed this production with "The Committee for the Reorganizing the Romanian Communist Party". Virgil was embarassed because he always signed with his own name the statements and because the paper was in a bad Romanian and ridiculous. Actually I was embarrassed too, because the environment in which I worked (intelectuals) was at that time highly ostile towards any kimd of Left, not only Communist Left. They were very eager to ridicule any weakness of us - and they believed in the axiom "No communist can be both inteligent and honest ".

      He felt frustrated too because Vadim Tudor did not agree to publish his real documents. So he went to the journal with a note denying the paternity of that statement. CV Tudor did not bother to publish it.

      Tuesday August 18 1992 he came to me and asked me to go with him to a visit. We went to a comrade of Pantazi, a good guy called Cristian Alexandrescu. He was a kind of national stalinist. In the subway he told me that he will go to Moldova in a last trip on thursday. I asked him loudly "What are you going to do in Moldova, Gili?" . He was scared , looked around as if he was expecting somebody to spy us and told me to shut up and not speak nonsense about Moldova. I mocked his conspirativity but now I think that he had his own reasons. As far as I remember, he asked Cristian to mediate between him and Pantazi. At that time I did not know that CV Tudor rejected Virgil's material.

      Thursday August 20 he payed me a last visit at my institute of mathematical statistics. That was the last time when I saw him alive. He was fresh shaved, looked very young and handsome. He was on the way to the railway station; he had bought an additive for the engine of his car (a second hand Trabant, the famous East German car made of plastic). He let the bottle with additive to me and told me that he will come again to take it Monday next week. After that we planned to go together to the seaside.

The nightmare. August 21 1992

      For me the nightmare began on Saturday , August 22. It was 9 in the morning. I have just returned from shopping when my wife told me to call my sister. I called her and asked what happenned. "Gili is dead" - she answered, faintly. "And what am I supposed to do?" - was my stupid reply . "You come here'. I hoped that it was not true, of course. How can be that? Railway accidents are thinks which happen only in the journals. Cannot be true. I went to my parents. There was a gentleman sitting in the armchair. Mum was crying and Dad was a broken old man. According to Dediu he was called that very morning by a guy from Comanesti which said that Gili was injured or dead, he cannot be sure.

      My sister is a phisician. She was the only lucid person at that time. She bought a coffin and a suit of clothes. Her husband produced a van and the four of us departed at 2 p.m. to search for Gili. The first informations was that Gili is at the hospital from Darmanesti, 400 kn NE from Bucharest. We arrived there in the evening. We asked if there was an accident reported. They said no. My hopes that Gili is alive increased. Then we went to the police. They said that there was an accident but at Comanesti, after another 20 km. We arrived at the hospital from Comanesti at about 10 pm. The doctor on guard told us that they have a corpse at the morgue, brought to them last night.

      Our hopes were vain. It was Gili, cut into two pieces.

      The forensic was asleep. He could not make the autopsy that very night, we had to wait until sunday, next day. Gili was hit by the train at Dofteana, between Comanesti and Darmanesti Friday at 9.45 p.m. It was not at the railway station. It was at a cross- road. There was only one railway line, not two of them. At the autopsy he told us his theory: when he was hit he was not standing, but he was at the ground. That his guess is that he was hit first at the throat and then put on the railway.

      He denied that, however , after that.

      The result of the research: it was an accident. The dead is guilty. He paid no attention to the train.